Memory and the Past Quotes in Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West Page 2
Citations follow this format: (Volume.Chapter.Paragraph) and (Volume.Chapter.Section.Paragraph)
| Quote #4 "I was in no state to know what was happening to me, and I spent about a year in a deathly sleep. It's just possible I brought a child to term and delivered it. ... I have no motherly warmth toward the boy" – she gulped, in case this was no longer true – "and I don't feel as if I've ever gone through the experience of bearing a child." (4.3.1.35) |
Elphaba raises a really interesting point in this somewhat soap opera-ish (or Kill Bill Vol. I) plot twist. For her, it seems that being a mother is tied to certain necessary memories and experiences.
| Quote #5 Life outside the cloister seemed to cloud up with such particularity – the shape of her seven years past was already being crowded out. All that undifferentiated time, washing terra-cotta floors without dipping her hands in the bucket – it took hours to do a single room, but no floor was ever cleaner. (4.1.1.20) |
The descriptions of Elphaba's time in a nunnery are really powerful, especially the idea of "undifferentiated time." For seven years of her life, time pretty much came to a halt.
| Quote #6 But surely evil was beyond proof, just as the Kumbric Witch was beyond the grasp of knowable history? (4.1.1.50) |
This idea of "knowable history" basically sums up Wicked, which constantly asks the question: how much can we really know a person?
